Moderating adult content, our new NSFW categorizer

The internet provides amazing opportunity to connect with each other and share information. But like every great invention, it has a dark side. Explicit content is lurking around every corner and it’s not uncommon to stumble upon it while innocently browsing the web. We call that content Not Safe For Work (NSFW) – not safe for minors and unappropriate for work.

We have been working hard to offer an excellent solution for detecting adult content and providing extremely effective API for distinguish between photos that are safe for work (no nudity), semi-safe (underwear and swimwear) and totally safe (no nudity whatsoever).

The NSFW (not safe for work) categorizer can be of extreme help for almost any online business that deals with user generated photos, or aggregates such from third parties. Various countries have quite strict restrictions on what content can be publicly available to minors, so we can help them too comply with the requirements. Not to mention Apple’s App Store restrictive rules on nudity that have been observed severely and have caused problems for apps, especially in the dating vertical.

Up to now, user generated photo content has been moderated manually. This is a time consuming and expensive process. It also, has some privacy problems – your sensitive content might end up being checked by somebody that you personally know (quite embarrassing, the world is small and this happens more often than you think).

Our adult content moderation categorizer can automate this process, so you can get a lot more content done in no time. The technology is in beta stage, and there might be some flaws, but we are still able to cover you and your app!

nsfw – not safe at all – expect p0rn images, nudes, body parts to be put into this category.

underwear – medium safe images such as lingerie, underwear, pants

safe – completely safe images without nudity

Here are a couple of uses cases that illustrate how our NSFW Categorizer can be used to speed up the process of content moderation:

Marketplaces – awesome for online shops/marketplaces where people upload products (along with some photos) and you provide the infrastructure. The NSFW filter can be moderately restrictive – underwear and swimwear photos can be included, but only nude photos stay out of the public pages.

Kids websites/communities – perfect candidate for aggressive filtering of adult content. Anything related to nudity can be filtered out. Imagga’s NSFW categorizer can be the first step of automated elimination of problematic adult content and then the rest can be manually moderated to make sure unapropriate photos are out of kids’ sight.

Dating websites – there are lots of issues here with adult content, especially when it comes to apps for iPhone. Dating sites employ lots of people to eliminate the problem. Sometimes you need to upload a new profile photo to impress somebody special and it’s very frustrating when moderation takes forever even though you uploaded just a facial photo.

There are probably tons of cases where the NSFW categorizer can be of very practical use. Why don’t you give it a try and share your impressions?